On Monday, Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Russian governmental Investigative Committee, published an article in the Kommersant daily. In it, he has suggested that the state should introduce criminal punishment for “illegal issuance and circulation of cryptocurrencies” as a means to combat the “hybrid war”, which is allegedly being waged against Russia by the West, under the command of the USA . “We know from our experience that virtual cryptocurrencies are often used to finance terrorism . Such cryptocurrencies don’t have a central issuer, a single point of control over transactions and are characterized by the anonymity of all payments ,” Bastrykin wrote, “Additionally, after becoming widespread, such currencies can supplant legitimate money from the market, which in turn endangers the financial stability of the state. Given all that, it’s recommended to introduce criminal punishment for illegal issuance and circulation of cryptocurrencies and other money surrogates.” Russian government’s stance on Bitcoin , which up until now has been quite ambiguous, has been the subject of many news articles over the last few years. The Ministry of Finance, on the one hand, was opposed to cryptocurrencies right from the start and has been moving forward several times with suggestions of imprisonment for up to 7 years .
At the same time, Russia’s Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina has taken a more moderate stance , without proposing any bans so far.
It’s important to note that Bastrykin’s article is his own personal initiative and as such carries no legal power. However, considering his high position and the usual lack of publicity from the Russian officials of his ranking, the article may potentially be a signal of the government taking a more defined stance.
Some people have claimed that this may be an attempt at testing ground before going ahead with the actual legislation, which […]
